Even as The CW continues to add new shows to its Arrowverse lineup, a potential spinoff series will not make headway on the network. Variety reports
Green Arrow and the Canaries is now “officially dead”.The news isn’t necessarily surprising, given the lack of updates surrounding the Arrow spin-off. Green arrow and
the Canaries was
first announced in September 2019, as Arrow entered its eighth and final season. The penultimate episode of Arrow served as
a backdoor pilot for the spin-off, which would have featured Mia Queen (Katherine McNamara), Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) and Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) defending Star City 20 years later. But since Arrow’s finale, there has been little word on Green Arrow and the Canaries, even as The CW ramped up the first season of Superman & Lois and announced a new superhero series like
Wonder girl and
Naomi.
In
IGN opinion on the backdoor pilot, we wrote, “As an epilogue to Crisis on Infinite Earths, ‘Green Arrow and the Canaries’ hits the mark mostly. It explores the ramifications of Crisis in an unexpected way, using it to flesh out the relationship between Mia Queen and John Diggle, Jr. and establish a new shared status quo for Laurel Lance and Dinah Drake. What this episode fails to do, however, is justify building a whole new series around the new sons of the plot introduced here. The new Arrow is preparing to be a little too much like the old one. This is not the recipe for success. “
It remains to be seen whether the futuristic plot threads introduced in this episode will continue in another form, or whether McNamara, Harkavy or Cassidy will reprise their roles elsewhere in the Arrowverse. Given that DC’s Legends of Tomorrow revolves heavily around time travel, this series could easily tie together the final details of Arrow. Or there’s always the possibility that Green Arrow and the Canaries could be reworked into an animated web series, similar to CW Seed’s Vixen and Freedom Fighters: The Ray.
The CW’s decision to shut down Green Arrow and the Canaries follows news that Supergirl will end with the upcoming season 6 and Black Lightning will end after season 4. However, with Superman & Lois premiered in February 2021, Stargirl migrating from DC Universe in Season 2, the aforementioned Wonder Girl and Naomi announcements and rumors of a Black Lightning spin-off focused on Painkiller, the Arrowverse doesn’t seem to get any smaller in the years to come.
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by follow @jschedeen on Twitter.
